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As some of you know I operate a small refrigerated freight carrier company. We have 6 over the road trucks and refer trailers. I just got a call from my dispatcher panicked... within 48 hours the rates have ABSOLUTELY tanked, so much so that we are electing to sit in Salt Lake City and Denver. We have been getting between $3.00 - $3.30 per mile, rates are now $2.00 per mile and lower. We simply can not make a profit at this number, we are literally losing money with every additional mile. The funny thing is this is across the board, the spot market is very quick to react to market conditions and there is very little fat. What this tells me is there is NO freight to move ( we move food) and there is a serious excess capacity with trucks. Between fuel cost, increased and unwarranted insurance increases they are KILLING small carriers such as myself. I also heard that Walmart and swift are cutting a huge % of their company drivers and back filling with owner operators. My gut is the insurance and maintenance costs coupled with downed trucks because of the lack of parts makes it hard to make a profit.

I hired back a driver that went to a company that had 46 truck fleet and 18 of the trucks were down waiting for parts (3-6 weeks for some longer for others)

As some of you know I operate a small refrigerated freight carrier company. We have 6 over the road trucks and refer trailers. I just got a call from my dispatcher panicked... within 48 hours the rates have ABSOLUTELY tanked, so much so that we are electing to sit in Salt Lake City and Denver. We have been getting between $3.00 - $3.30 per mile, rates are now $2.00 per mile and lower. We simply can not make a profit at this number, we are literally losing money with every additional mile. The funny thing is this is across the board, the spot market is very quick to react to market conditions and there is very little fat. What this tells me is there is NO freight to move ( we move food) and there is a serious excess capacity with trucks. Between fuel cost, increased and unwarranted insurance increases they are KILLING small carriers such as myself. I also heard that Walmart and swift are cutting a huge % of their company drivers and back filling with owner operators. My gut is the insurance and maintenance costs coupled with downed trucks because of the lack of parts makes it hard to make a profit. I hired back a driver that went to a company that had 46 truck fleet and 18 of the trucks were down waiting for parts (3-6 weeks for some longer for others)

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I can certainly try...we operate off of the spot market because our trucks are constantly in different locations so fixed routes don't really work for us. The market is very quick to adapt to supply and demand and is mostly controlled by freight brokers looking to move freight. Typically we need about $2.80 per mile to make a profit! We are seeing rates as of yesterday out of Salt Lake sub $1.50 per mile. My understanding is there is a definite shortage of truckers in the industry, that I can verify. Because pricing in the spot market is set by supply and demand. If we have a shortage of trucks and truckers, this is signaling to me that the movable freight is falling below even that level which is scary!